Granted this is trivial, but it seems odd that this restriction is imposed. This is purely for aesthetic reasons and I found it makes the program a bit harder to use, so I turned it off in the program's preferences.īeyond the tool layout, the program's window is resizable to a point, though, it does maintain a set aspect ratio so you cannot stretch it along the bottom of your screen or otherwise fit it into odd places. The interface is animated, so when you mouse-over the tools, they will zoom toward you. The tools are presented in a semicircular arrangement, with the most common or useful ones presented first, and the rest available if you click the "next" arrow. The Drive Genius interface is simple, but the animations can be a bit cumbersome to deal with.Īs with most drive utility software programs, Drive Genius has a simple interface that is essentially a menu of the available tools. The only real speed benefit is that running the program regularly will mean you can maintain the current speed of your system by tackling errors sooner rather than later. If an error is causing your system to lag, then fixing that error may return your speed to normal however, beyond some small temporary benefits from tasks such as defragmentation, you will not notice any appreciable speed increase by having Drive Genius installed. There are numerous recovery utilities for this, including Prosoft's Data Rescue utility, which will scan media for evidence of missing files and present you with options to recover them But Drive Genius will not do this.ĭrive Genius will not double the speed of your system. For Drive Genius to perform its tasks, the drive's hardware needs to be running properly.ĭrive Genius will also not recover any lost or inadvertently deleted files. reporting, or is making odd sounds and is not responding (usually coupled with system hangs and crashes), then using a software-based utility will not help. While Drive Genius can help fix a variety of problems, there are some tasks it will not do. In addition, it will help you optimize your drive by defragmenting it, removing duplicate and unused files, and continually monitoring the media for any issues that may crop up in the future.īeyond tasks that will directly diagnose or solve problems, Drive Genius has options to help you manage your drives by repartitioning, volume cloning, and options for initializing and shredding files so you can be sure no data is recoverable when erasing your drive. It will fix corrupt filesystem structure (the HFS+ database files used for tracking data on the drive), scan the media for bad blocks, perform testing, and perform benchmarking on the drive. A demo version is available for download for those who wish to try the software out.ĭrive Genius is an all-in-one utility for diagnosing and fixing errors with your hard drive or other storage media. A single license for personal use costs $99, with a professional license allowing for use on customer- and company-owned drives costing $249. There are complete drive management utilities like TechTool Pro, Disk Tools Pro, and Drive Genius, which are all credible and recommended options.ĭrive Genius 3 is the latest of the utility suites from Prosoft Engineering, and is considered one of the best drive utilities for the Mac. features than Apple's Disk Utility (see this recent Mac OSX Hints article for proof of concept) as well as defragmentation tools. These include task-specific utilities like S.M.A.R.T. Apple includes Disk Utility, which is a good start and will help people in most cases, but there are also a variety of third-party options. diagnostics and filesystem journaling, but even with these options it is still advisable to have a robust drive utility handy to ensure the storage system for your computer is healthy. There are a variety of safeguards against hardware failures and filesystem corruption, including S.M.A.R.T. This high level of activity increases the potential of problems and failure for drives. The system is constantly writing and reading from the drive by moving files around, editing them, and tracking changes in the journal. When it happens, it can be one of the most frustrating experiences, not only because of data loss, but because the whole system can stop working if the boot drive is compromised.ĭrives can suffer from a variety of issues such as mechanical breakdowns when firmware and controller boards stop working, as well as filesystem structure corruption if input/ouput problems cause an improper write event to the drive. Hard drive/storage malfunction is one of the more common computer problems.
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